To make it easier to understand: #SinglePayer health insurance is letting a clerk at the #DMV decide whether you get heart surgery or not.

To make it easier to understand: #SinglePayer health insurance is letting a clerk at the #DMV decide whether you get heart surgery or not.

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) August 5, 2017

California Single Payer is dead….for the time being

California Single Payer is dead….for the time being https://t.co/sgiKb9yxQn

— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) June 26, 2017

How would you like a $200 billion tax increase?

The price tag on universal health care is in, and it’s bigger than California’s budget

Folks SB 562 is NOT the answer to improving Health Insurance in CA. Please spend the time to get educated about... https://t.co/esjyObzxxV

— Alan P Herman (@apherman) May 22, 2017

Universal health care would mean a $200B tax hike for Californians. Yes "B" for billion. https://t.co/V9en48JUpj #CAPolitics

— HJTA.org (@HJTA) May 22, 2017

It would cost $400 billion per year to remake California’s health insurance marketplace and create a publicly funded universal heath care system, according to a state financial analysis released Monday.

California would have to find an additional $200 billion per year, including in new tax revenues, to create a so-called “single-payer” system, the analysis by the Senate Appropriations committee found. The estimate assumes the state would retain the existing $200 billion in local, state and federal funding it currently receives to offset the total $400 billion price tag....

The price tag on a California single payer plan is in, and it’s bigger than the state budget https://t.co/uDir1RKZdk

— Joan Walsh (@joanwalsh) May 22, 2017

Single-payer proposal would cost more than the whole CA State Budget - which is already the largest in the nation. https://t.co/KmhkCP3GSX

— Tab Berg (@tabberg) May 22, 2017

Everyone will get paid in glitter and be allowed to ride unicorns to work. https://t.co/qZvvSiHYxF

— Jennifer Kent (@sacrunnergirl) May 22, 2017

Can your family afford an extra $10,000 in taxes?

Can your family afford an extra $10,000/yr in taxes? #singlepayer #CAPolitics https://t.co/bUWnhUJPJR

— HJTA.org (@HJTA) May 7, 2017

Under a single-payer system, health care would be financed through taxing people to support a government-run program rather than through having them or their employers pay for private health insurance coverage. Doing that would require a massive tax increase on California families along with huge pay cuts for nurses, doctors and other health care professionals. And, it would spell the end of the employer-sponsored insurance that half the state relies on and values.

Why single payer died in Vermont

◼ Vermont was supposed to be the beacon for a single-payer health care system in America. But now its plans are in ruins, and its onetime champion Gov. Peter Shumlin may have set back the cause. - Politico

Advocates of a “Medicare for all” approach were largely sidelined during the national Obamacare debate. The health law left a private insurance system in place and didn’t even include a weaker “public option” government plan to run alongside more traditional commercial ones.

So single-payer advocates looked instead to make a breakthrough in the states. Bills have been introduced from Hawaii to New York; former Medicare chief Don Berwick made it a key plank of his unsuccessful primary race for Massachusetts governor.

Vermont under Shumlin became the most visible trailblazer. Until Wednesday, when the governor admitted what critics had said all along: He couldn’t pay for it.

This liberal governor has made a horrifying discovery about single-payer health care.

◼ What? It would cost money? - Dan Calabrese/CAINTV.COM

Vermont's liberal governor abandons single-payer plan because state couldn't handle the taxes

◼ Vermont’s Giving Up On Single-Payer Health Care Over Ballooning Costs - Daily Caller

“I am not going to undermine the hope of achieving critically important health care reforms for this state by pushing prematurely for single payer when it is not the right time for Vermont,” Shumlin said in a statement Wednesday. “In my judgment, now is not the right time to ask our legislature to take the step of passing a financing plan for Green Mountain Care.”

The problem is, of course, how to pay for it. Even while plans were moving forward for a 2017 launch of the single-payer system, to be called Green Mountain Care, Shumlin had held off on releasing a plan for how to pay for the system, waiting until his announcement Wednesday.

Tax hikes required to pay for the system would include a 11.5 percent payroll tax as well as an additional income tax ranging all the way up to 9.5 percent. Shumlin admitted that in the current climate, such a precipitous hike would be disastrous for Vermont’s economy.